Praxeology

Praxeology is a methodology that seeks to study the logical structure of conscious human action a priori. Praxeology focuses its attention on the individual who acts (methodological individualism), drawing from this observation axioms or elementary, immutable and unquestionable principles, with which to analyze the process of human action. The analysis begins with the appreciations and aspirations of the consumer, who supposedly would operate based on his own (and always changing) scale of values. Combining and intertwining the value scales of all people would generate the total economic supply and demand (subjective assessment).

Praxeology takes economic science as the application of logical axioms without which scientific argumentation would not be possible; and rejects using the methods of the natural sciences (study of causal regularities) to study the social sciences (study of the actions of man). At this point, what is and how knowledge is obtained is debated: the defenders of praxeology propose it as an alternative to the method of the natural sciences since they consider that in social events there are no parameters or constants, but that all are "variables", which makes it very difficult, if not impossible, to extract historical laws or make predictions. Instead, its detractors regard praxeology as a pseudoscience. The main argument they put forward is that, while science starts from empirical observations to later examine the underlying causes of phenomena, praxeology starts from certain axioms presented as indubitable, without empirically verifying the axioms themselves or their implications.

The term «Praxeology» was used for the first time in 1608 by the German philosopher, physicist and theologian Clemens Timpler (1563-1624) in his work Philosophiae practicae systema methodum, although his definition is credited the French thinker Alfred Espinas (1844-1922); it is commonly used in connection with the work of the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises and his followers in the Austrian School.

Praxeological Axioms

For praxeology, the truths and conclusions that specifically interweave economic science and, in general, the social sciences, are nothing but logical derivations of the principles of human action:

• The human being acts.
• Human beings prefer things to others.
• It resorts to action to reach its ever-movable, but at every specific and specific moment, goals.
• Time factor influences your actions.
• The incentive that pushes a person to act is a certain discomfort for something.
• If a person is perfectly happy he does not act, because he no longer wants anything.
• All the people who act are unhappy.

These praxeological axioms are first postulated in the treatise on economics Human Action, written by Ludwig von Mises.

Logical structure

Mises tried to find the conceptual root of economics. Like other classical economists, he refused to look at the real world; saying that human actors were too complex to be reduced to their components and too self-aware not to alter their behavior when they knew they were being observed. This is why praxeologists claimed that scientific observation of human action (or its extrapolation from historical data) would always suffer from contamination by overlooked factors.

To counter the subjective nature of the results of historical and statistical analysis, von Mises proposed the study of the "logical structure" of human action. Today the scientific study of behavior is called cognitive science, but during Mises's lifetime the modern advances in neurology on which this branch of science is based did not exist.

In administration, the indissolubility of the relations of praxeology with three other philosophical disciplines is considered, namely: epistemology, axiology and ontology, as a methodology to understand the behavior of the human being in organizations.

Satisfaction

From praxeology, Mises derived the idea that every conscious act of the human being has as its goal the improvement of the person's level of satisfaction. He was especially careful to point out that praxeology is not concerned with the individual's definition of what satisfaction is, but only with the way in which the individual seeks it: the way in which the person increases his satisfaction by eliminating a source of satisfaction. discontent. Since the future is uncertain, all action is speculative.

Rationality

The man of action must have at least one source of unpleasantness that he thinks he can eliminate; otherwise, he could not act.

It should be clarified that this rationality refers to the ability to act in accordance with an end, that is, according to its subjective scale of values. In other words: man can change his evaluations and after changing them, he changes his attitude; this may seem illogical to an outside observer, but it is completely logical to the one who acts.

Ordinality

Another conclusion that von Mises reached was that decisions are made in ordinal mode: it is impossible to carry out more than one action at the same time, since the conscious mind is only capable of processing one decision at a time, even when these decisions are made in rapid sequence, appearing simultaneous. Thus, the individual will act according to his priorities: he will first remove the source of his greatest discontent in order to progressively reassess his situation and consequently identify the greatest source of discontent. Therefore, his second goal will always be less important than his first, and so on. And thus, his satisfaction from each subsequent goal achieved will be less than what he got from more pressing goals. This is the rule of diminishing marginal utility.

Praxeometry is a field of knowledge that enables the construction of tests from the conscious, rational and deliberate process of human beings, to identify their type of behavior from the logic of human action (praxis). It is based on statistical methods that guarantee its validity and reliability, and takes praxeology (Mises, 1949) as a reference. The only praxiometric instrument reported is the so-called HAT (Human Action's Test).